“Do you know Teresa Blair?” I asked as he was about to return to his stool.
“Mrs. Blair? Sure I do.”
“Is she in the club now?”
“Nope.”
“When’s the last time she was here?”
“Let me think. Middle of last week, I’d say. She’s generally here every morning. Nothing happened to Mrs. Blair, did it?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Someone else asked about her yesterday.”
“Who?”
“A man.”
“What man?”
“Don’t know the gentleman.”
“Her husband?”
“Wouldn’t know her husband if he crapped in my hat. Hope he’s a good man, though.”
“Why?”
The old man looked away, at something beyond the wall. “Mrs. Blair, she’s my favorite. Always says hello to me. Every time. It’s a simple thing, even babies can manage it, but you’d be surprised at how many people around here think they got something better to do.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I said, then reached in my pocket and brought out the snapshot I’d taken from Teresa Blair’s room. “This the guy looking for Mrs. Blair?”
“Nope.”
“Ever seen this guy before?”
“Nope.”
“What did the man who was here yesterday look like?”
“Clean. Chipped tooth. Butch haircut. Like a man who wears what someone else tells him to.”
I smiled at the description. “You ever see Mrs. Blair with any other members besides Miss Verritt?”
“Well, she’s real friendly to all of them, but no one special.”
“How about men?”
The old eyes narrowed. “I tell you, son. If I had seen her with someone, which I’m not saying I did, I wouldn’t tell you about it. Or anyone else.”
I patted the old man on a bony shoulder and tugged on one of the brass rings and went inside the club.
The tile foyer took me past a reservation desk and a sports shop and a simulated tide pool and through a glass door, which opened onto a deck full of tables and chairs and men and women in short, white clothes. Beyond the deck were the courts. Beyond the courts was a hedge. Beyond the hedge echoed the laughs and screams of youthful high jinks: a swimming pool or a Woody Allen film festival.
They were all dressed for tennis, but the only balls in sight were highballs. They sat in small groups, whispering, gasping, gaping, exclaiming. I had no idea what Tancy Verritt looked like, but if she was there on the deck, she looked like every other woman in the place.
I stood there in my brown suit, a fly in the frappé, trying to catch the eye of one of the waiters who looked blasé enough to be able to identify the members for me, when a woman rose out of a group of particularly beautiful people clustered around a white table with a yellow umbrella sprouting from it and walked toward me. She was tall and richly burnished, full-bodied and careless. The mole above the left corner of her mouth was the same color as her lips. Her nose was pert, possibly bobbed. A row of pale blue ruffles was visible beneath her tennis skirt. The visor over her eyes reminded me of crap games of my youth. Behind it, her hair fell in a single, heavy braid. Her eyes and neck looked older than the rest of her.
“Mr. Tanner?”
“Ms. Verritt?”
“Won’t you join me? I’m afraid I don’t have much time to give you, love.” She gave me an appraisal that lacked only a loupe. “Not now, at any rate,” she added.
“I don’t collect time, Ms. Verritt; I don’t like the container it comes in. Just information.”
“Oh? Somehow I thought … oh, well. Come on.”
She was still frowning at my obscure flippancy when she pirouetted, her skirt flaring briefly above the blue ruffled pants, and led me toward an empty table at the far end of the deck. As she walked past the group she’d come from, she wiggled three of her fingers and received smiles mirroring her own exactly calibrated indifference. I just kept looking like the sap they assumed me to be.
She sat in the shade and left me in a sun so hot it made everything but my necktie expand. We hadn’t been seated more than a second when a waiter sidled up. He was young and swarthy, with thick lips and a black moustache, tight pants and short red jacket, every man’s idea of what every woman likes. He stood with pen poised, silent and still and in a great position to look down the bodice of Ms. Verritt’s little white dress. When I said, “Beer,” his glance rolled down my face along with my sweat. Tancy Verritt ordered a gimlet and the waiter slipped away on two crepe soles.
Tancy Verritt raised her visor off her head and shook her auburn mane, then lit a cigarette. The nails on the fingers that held it were long and as red as wine. “Well, love? I have court three reserved for exactly ten minutes from now.”
I glanced at the empty rectangles beyond the deck. “For what? Air races?”
The paste on her lips cracked. “You don’t like the club, do you, Mr. Tanner?”
“I don’t waste energy disliking places, Ms. Verritt.”
“Oh? On what do you expend it, then?”
“People.”
In a place where adverse personal comment always came from the backhand side, my forehand took Ms. Verritt aback. “Let’s get to the point, shall we?” she said brusquely. “Why did Tessa sick you onto me? Are you a lonely bachelor? A misunderstood husband? Or are you something Tessa thinks I need for what ails me?”
“What ails you, Ms. Verritt?”
She looked at me squarely for the first time. “Boredom, love. Unadulterated boredom.”
“Why don’t you try spending your time somewhere else?”
She rolled her eyes and curled her lips, and just for a moment something other than her own image came to mind, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t hold the thought. When the waiter brought the drinks, Tancy Verritt sipped hers avidly, draining half the glass. From the way she slammed the glass to the table she’d already drained several others that morning. Before she spoke again I knew we weren’t going to be discussing the Racquet Club any longer. Enough was apparently enough, even for the terminally bored.
“You can tell Tessa she’s been neglecting me shamelessly,” Tancy Verritt exclaimed suddenly. The anger was mock; the milieu was vaudeville. We were going to ham it up, pretend nothing was wrong with life the way we were living it.
“You mentioned her on the phone, didn’t you, love?” she asked when I didn’t respond. “Tessa Blair? I haven’t mixed you up with someone else, have I? I do that sometimes.”
“You’re not mixed up, Ms. Verritt. At least not about me.”
She let that one skip past. Ace. “Well? What is it you want? Or did you come here just to insult my friends?”
I gave her a relaxed smile, a harmless mien. “I’m here to talk to you about Teresa Blair.”
“Tessa?” Her eyes grew. “Oh. Well. What am I, a character reference? Is Tessa up for an ambassadorship? The CIA? Pope?” Her laugh was strained, possibly frightened.
“When’s the last time you saw Mrs. Blair?” I asked.
“Let’s see. Last week. Right here. Thursday, I think. Thursday morning.”
“How did she seem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she nervous? Frightened? Angry? Anything at all unusual?”
As her attention shifted to something other than herself, Tancy Verritt’s jaunty pose gave way. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to Tessa?”
“Mrs. Blair is missing,” I said flatly.
“No. Oh, no. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
She was surprised and off balance, and if I could have kept the pressure on, I might have learned everything she knew, but just then a man strolled up to our table, a tennis type. He was cradling three rackets in his arms, as if he was ready to burp them. He wore manufacturers labels like battle decorations—Head, Prince, Puma, Donnay. He placed a hand on Tancy Verritt�
�s shoulder and asked if she was ready. She shrugged the hand away absently and told the man she couldn’t play just yet. She called him by name. His name was Chip. His face stiffened at the rejection and he pranced away, calling out to another woman, setting up a game. He called the woman Mimzy. I looked around for Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara. They must have just left.
“How long has Tessa been gone?” Tancy Verritt asked.
“Three days. Since just after you saw her.”
“Do the police know?”
“Yes.”
“Was it the Vegas people?”
The question was a surprise. It floated there beneath the umbrella, sheltered and safe, for quite some time. “What Vegas people are those?” I asked after a minute.
She plucked at the strap of her dress. “Forget what I said,” she ordered. The words caught in her throat. “It’s nothing.” She didn’t believe it and neither did I.
“Did Mrs. Blair live in Vegas? … Is someone there after her? … Is she running from something?”
Tancy Verritt’s head shook through my questions, stamping them void. “Are you a cop?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Private. Her husband hired me.”
“James?”
I nodded. “Do you know about Mrs. Blair’s problem with a man named Fluto?”
Tancy Verritt nodded. “A little.”
“Was Mrs. Blair frightened enough of Fluto to have run off to avoid testifying against him?”
“Are you asking me if that’s what I think happened?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I most definitely don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Why not?”
“Because Tessa wasn’t afraid of men. Any men, including that one.”
“Explain.”
“It’s just that Tessa wasn’t awed by men. She didn’t need them, didn’t use them as crutches, the way a lot of us do. Sometimes I think she didn’t even want them.”
I took a flier. “Lesbian?”
Her smile was sour. “Don’t be ridiculous. All I’m saying is Tessa challenged men. It was an adversary thing, a contest. She gave in once in a while, but it was always on her own terms.”
“You sound awfully positive.”
“About her not running from Fluto? I am. Tessa was the bravest person I’ve ever met.” She glanced at something behind me. “She may have been the only brave person I’ve ever met,” she added with what from her must have been reverence. “God, I hope nothing’s happened to Tessa. She’s really my only friend, you know? Or was until I caught onto her.” Her voice lacked artfulness for the first time since I’d spoken to her on the phone the day before. It was clear she’d forgotten about her spat with Teresa Blair until just that moment.
“What happened?”
“I discovered dear Tessa was using me for a bird dog.”
“What do you mean?”
“I talk about my men, love. Always have, always will. Mostly I talked to Tessa. I date a whole lot of guys, some of them even nice, some of them even single. And every time I found a nice single one, he’d drop me a couple of weeks later. Not exactly unprecedented, but I finally found out why my failure rate was zooming. Tessa took them away.”
“How’d you find out?”
“One of the guys said something one night. When he was zonked on pot. And after that I started watching Tessa. And I could tell.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “What could I say? Men preferred her to me. Any man in his right mind would.”
“Did you ask the men about it?”
“One.”
“What’d he say?”
“Just that Tessa called him up a few days after I’d told her about him. Arranged a rendezvous at some hideaway. Swore him to secrecy and gave him the best fuck of his life. A few months later she broke it off. Great while it lasted.”
“How many guys you figure she did this with?”
“Six. Ten. Who counts?”
Tancy Verritt took a second pull at her drink and finished it off, then beckoned for the waiter to bring her another. “All this raises the possiblity Mrs. Blair may have disappeared because of a domestic problem,” I said. “Do you know of any reason why she’d want to leave her husband?”
Tancy Verritt chuckled. “Have you met James?”
I nodded.
“Did he tell you how he almost became a Buddhist monk?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what he probably didn’t tell you was that he lives like a monk anyway. No good food, no good booze, no good sex. Seaweed and sake and Saturday night, that’s it for old Jimmy. I don’t know what you know about monks, love, but you never hear a lot about how much their wives like it there at the monastery.”
I laughed. “So Teresa felt neglected.”
“She was neglected.”
“What did she do about it?”
“The same thing sixty percent of American wives do. Like I said, she fooled around. Very quietly, but all the same.”
The waiter placed a fresh gimlet in front of her. She drained half of it while he was still looking down her dress. “And don’t think I’m a snitch. I tell you this only because you say Tessa could be in trouble.”
“Did her husband know?”
“No, but that’s probably because he never asked.”
“Who did she fool with?”
“Lots. At least one of them is sitting within ten yards of you. Another was the guy who came to the table a while back, the one I was supposed to play with this morning. The one I woke up next to about four hours ago.” She added the last as though she still didn’t quite believe it herself.
I resisted the temptation to look around for the men. “Any point in my talking to them?”
“None.”
“Why not?”
“Old news. Tessa hasn’t been with either of them in more than a year.”
“Do you know the names of all her playmates?”
She shook her head. “I used to, I think. Lately, I’m not so sure.”
“Something changed?”
She shrugged. “Tessa just didn’t talk about her fucks. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I spent so much time talking about mine.”
She paused a moment, deciding whether to go on. I thought about how Tancy Verritt had just used words similar to those I’d heard from Kathryn Martin the night before. I asked Ms. Verritt if she knew Kathryn Martin. “Never heard of her,” she said.
“When I talked with James Blair, he didn’t seem to know much about his wife’s background,” I said. “Where she grew up, her family, things like that. What do you know about her?”
“Nothing. Neither of us is the type to dwell on our pasts.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Maybe because all we have going for us is the future. Such as it is.”
“I take it from what you said before that she spent some time in Vegas.”
“You take it wrong.”
She was lying, and she knew I knew it. “Can you tell me anything at all?” I urged. “She could be in serious trouble.”
“Sorry.”
I pulled out the snapshot and put it on the table next to her drink.
“Where’d you get that?” Her eyes were wide, the words blurted without thought.
“Who is it?”
She glanced quickly around the deck. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I never saw him before.”
The set of her jaw told me I had all I was going to get. I made one last try. “Who else might know where Mrs. Blair is?”
“If I don’t know, I don’t think anyone would.” She paused. “Unless maybe it was Elliott.”
“The owner of Bathsheba’s?”
“Yes. Tessa gave it away to lots of guys, but poor Elliott couldn’t get any even for a part interest in the store. And he wanted it worse than anyone. He’ll probably die trying to get in Tessa’s p
ants.” Her smile turned bitter and resigned, and then wasn’t a smile at all.
6
I flipped some bills on the table and bid Ms. Verritt adieu and strolled back to my car, waving to the guard in the booth as I went by. The engine was running and my hand was on the shift lever when someone else’s hand reached through the window and poked me on the shoulder. Hard.
What I saw when I turned was Mr. Tennis himself, “Chip.”
“Tancy told me you were asking about Tessa,” he said. His voice carried a threat. He’d used it that way before.
“Tancy talks too much,” I said pleasantly, “which makes at least three things she does to excess.”
“What are the other two?”
“You figure it out the next time you have some spare time.” His whole life was spare, and I wanted him to know I knew it.
“I didn’t come out here to talk about Tancy,” he said. “I don’t care about her. No one cares about her. I came to tell you not to go nosing around town asking about me and Tessa.”
“Why not?”
“Because it might get back to certain people I’d rather it didn’t.”
I smiled at his country club puritanism, that peculiar philosophy which deems any act acceptable as long as certain people know about it and certain other people don’t. “If you don’t want me asking questions about you and Mrs. Blair, why don’t you tell me about it? Then I won’t have to ring any doorbells.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” he said quickly. “We had some good times a few months back, and then we didn’t. That’s all there is to it.”
“Whose idea was it to stop?”
“Mine.” He looked at my skepticism. “All right. It was hers.”
“No tears, no recriminations, is that it?”
“You got it,” he said mildly.
“You’re used to women tossing you out the door, I guess,” I taunted.
“Yeah, well, Tessa tossed lots of guys out, one time or another. I was with her as long as anyone.”
“How long was that?”
“A month. Just don’t advertise it, get it? My wife wouldn’t like it. Tessa wouldn’t like it, either.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me she’d cut my balls off if I ever blabbed about us.” It was more than he’d wanted to say.
State’s Evidence Page 6
